Top Democrats Steer Clear Of Biden’s Pardon

Hunter Biden’s pardon is quickly becoming something of a third rail in the earliest stages of the 2028 presidential primary, with few ambitious Democrats showing any desire to touch it.

Many of the governors and senators who are vying to become the future of the Democratic Party are declining to weigh in on Joe Biden’s last-minute, sweeping decision to grant clemency to his son after promising for months that he wouldn’t use the power and instead would let the justice system do its work.

Their silence, for now, means the nation’s leading Democrats are eschewing the opportunity to break with — or to defend — the unpopular president even after the party’s shellacking in last month’s election. Though they're avoiding the topic for the time being, it will continue to loom as a pressure point and could come up at future presidential debates.

Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Andy Beshear of Kentucky and JB Pritzker of Illinois declined to weigh in or did not respond to requests for comment on the pardon when asked by POLITICO. Neither did Sens. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota or Cory Booker of New Jersey.

On the other hand, many of the candidates running for chair of the Democratic National Committee or considering it are either defending Biden or coming out in support of his pardon. The contenders need to appeal to party stalwarts, many of whom are Biden allies, in the weeks before the Feb. 1 election.

Taken together, the mixed messages add up to a muddled response from Democrats still reeling from the news — and they underscore that the party has no unified approach to confronting what is a highly fraught and personal issue.

Biden said he decided this weekend to grant his sole living son clemency after he determined that the federal prosecution of him was “infected” by “raw politics” and was ultimately a “miscarriage of justice.” Hunter Biden has pleaded guilty to tax crimes and was convicted on gun charges.

The White House’s announcement came shortly after Donald Trump said that he wants MAGA firebrand Kash Patel, who has promised to shutter the FBI’s Washington headquarters, to lead the agency.

Only the more iconoclastic or little-known potential 2028 contenders distanced themselves from Biden’s pardon.

Progressive Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who co-chaired Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign, said that he “can empathize with the president as a father” and “empathize with Hunter Biden's situation of being targeted and facing substance abuse.”

But Khanna said he did not back the pardon, arguing that the president should not have had the power to grant clemency to begin with and should have pushed to roll back that authority while in office.

“The reality is it's an anachronistic power from the time of kings,” he said. “Most Americans who face unfairness with the process and have deep emotional ties to their kids when they face disproportionate sentencing don't have access to power.”

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), a Biden ally who has been unafraid to pick fights with members of his own party, told POLITICO that he agreed with the president that his son has been treated differently by the justice system because of politics. But he said the same is also true of Trump in a case that ended in him being convicted of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records as part of a hush-money payment to a porn star.

He said that both men, therefore, should be pardoned.

“Those cases were clearly weaponized against them for political gain. That's undeniable,” he said. “That was always inappropriate in my opinion. And a pardon in both are appropriate. And, for me, that collectively has damaged America's trust in these institutions.”

Gov. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), who angered Democrats recently when he offered cautious praise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. being tapped to join Trump’s administration, criticized Biden’s decision on X Sunday night shortly after the White House announced the pardon.

“While as a father I certainly understand President @JoeBiden’s natural desire to help his son by pardoning him, I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country,” he said. “This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation.”

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who received less than 1 percentage point of the vote in the first primary state of New Hampshire when he ran for president in 2020, posted on X that “President Biden’s decision put personal interest ahead of duty and further erodes Americans’ faith that the justice system is fair and equal for all.”

Several of the Democrats running to lead the national party defended Biden or supported his pardon.

Former Gov. Martin O’Malley, who is campaigning to head the DNC, said, “I don't blame the president for protecting his son from a man who has vowed to persecute his political enemies and their family members. I would do the same for my children.”

Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic Party chair who is also running for the post, suggested that he agreed with Biden’s move, saying that “the president’s statement speaks for itself” and that “Trump’s plan to wield federal power through extremists like Kash Patel to attack his political enemies and their families is a frightening reality that the whole country needs to prepare for.”

Ken Martin, chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and another DNC chair candidate, said that he understands Biden’s “instinct to be a protective father” as a dad himself and argued that the pardon system should be “reformed” so it can’t be used for personal reasons by anyone.

“Any Republicans who are expressing outrage today but didn’t blink when Donald Trump pardoned his son-in-law’s father are hypocrites,” he said.

Chuck Rocha, a strategist who is considering running for DNC chair, said, “I’m very pro-Biden pardon. I’m very anti-lying about it. As somebody who has run a presidential campaign, it would’ve been easy to dodge this.”

And Michael Blake, a former New York Assembly member who is eyeing a DNC chair bid, called the pardon “fair and just on the facts” in a text.

Other Democrats worried that Biden’s pardon complicates their attempts to paint Trump and his allies as unfairly attacking the Justice Department as a political tool and eroding the rule of law.

New York State Sen. James Skoufis, who recently launched a longshot bid for DNC chair, said in an interview that that though he empathized with Biden’s role as a father, his pardon “does undermine our ability to make the case against Donald Trump when he absurdly claims that the Department of Justice has been targeting him and his loyalists, and so it's disappointing when I see this news.”

He added, “As Democrats, we need to very sorely rebuild trust in communities and address the reputational deficit that we have with so many Americans, this does not help.”

Several potential DNC chair candidates, including Michigan State. Sen. Mallory McMorrow, former Rep. Max Rose (D-N.Y.), 2020 Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, declined to comment or did not respond to questions about the pardon.

Despite some Democrats’ attempts to run away from the issue on Monday, it was bubbling up organically across the country. And in at least a few corners of the party, pressure was building to take a stand apart from Biden. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), who all represent swing districts or states, criticized the pardon on social media.

Former Rep. Cheri Bustos, who was at an Illinois Chamber of Commerce event in Chicago’s western suburbs this morning, sidestepped a question from an attendee about whether Biden's pardon could give Trump political cover for possible pardons for those charged in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“I don’t see how that has anything to do with Hunter Biden being pardoned," Bustos said.

After leaving the stage, she added in an interview, “What father wouldn’t want to help his son if he is in a position to do so? As the mother of three boys, I would do all that is possible to give them a better life. He did what most dads would do. He reacted as a father.”